Talk:Visual thinking
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There is a whole section of geographical thinking that has not been added here. Whilst it is a stub, it has the ability to be expanded in a much greater capacity, given appropriate research with people such as Silverman but also with input from behavioural geographers. 01:55, 5 July 2006 (UTC) Parawirra
Nice, this article is about me isn't it...
...thanks a lot, Haraldur.
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[edit] POV
This article borrows liberally from The Visual-Spatial Learner: An Introduction. Has anyone asked Dr. Linda Kreger Silverman, Ph.D., for her permission to use her material like this?
This reads like pseudo-scientific propaganda, complete with an MBTI-like enumeration of famous individuals that supposedly represent the characteristics of the model.
I resemble this. This sounds like an amped-up version of the common aptitude that the Johnson O’Connor Human Engineering Laboratory calls 'Structural Visualization'. (http://www.jocrf.org/) Simply stated, people with this talent can visualize structures in 3D and even manipulate that visualization. For the physician, this gives a sort of 'virtual x-ray vision', an engineer might experience it as an instant, mental, CAD-CAM program, while an interior designer would be able to simply look at a room and know what furniture will fit.
The current article may read like pseudo-science, but the... phenomenon is real, testable, and inherited.
[edit] XPLANE listing
Should XPLANE really be included in see also? Timothy Clemans 21:23, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Removed this sentence
I removed the following sentence, "*Thinking at a subliminal rate of 32 concepts per second, as opposed to the 6-7 words per second experienced by typical verbal-sequential thinkers, thus appearing to intuitively come to conclusions that are very hard to reach by using typical linear reasoning". 32 concepts per second? This sounds like nonsense, I took it out. --Xyzzyplugh 04:23, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
- Agreed, that sentence stuck out for me as well. A "subliminal rate" would probably be difficult to measure experimentally. Additionally, 32 is a precise number, where a range like "25-35" would really be more appropriate. If someone can find the study that spawned this concept, feel free to reference it. pmj 22:07, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Problems
While this is certainly a valid and interesting concept, most of the article does not ring true, and amounts to nothing more than pseudoscience. What to do? —Viriditas | Talk 09:36, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
I'd agree that this article sounds somewhat pseudoscientific at the moment. It also comes across as npov in favour of visual thinking. Have a look at unsourced statements like: "Among gifted students, the proportion of visual-spatial learners may be much higher. In one small sample, more than three-fourths of the gifted students preferred visual-spatial methods." It really reads like a self help book written to sell copies improve the self esteem of visual thinkers rather than a clear well sourced article about an aspect of human psychology. Saluton 22:54, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Focus on disability
Is it just me or is the article an attempt to conflate several mental disabilities with a particular mechanism present in all individuals? If you had only one hand (the left), you could "prove" that you're not disabled, but merely left-handed. Similarly, this article points out in every second sentence that autism and dyslexia are concomitant with visual thinking. Obviously, if a certain mechanism (here, language) is damaged, similar tasks are handled by a another mechanism (here, visual thinking). That doesn't mean that mentally disabled people are just as gifted like the most skilled visual thinkers (with or without a language-related disability). --Vuo 16:00, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Left handedness.
I have no proof - but it seems to me that an unusually large percentage of visual thinkers are also left-handed. It kinda makes sense because a larger proportion of dyslexics are left handed, as are the mildly autistic Asperger's syndrome people. Left-handers also dominate occupations such as architecture. This is really striking to me - and I'm surprised it's not in the article. Is there published evidence for this? (I wouldn't want to promote 'original research' here). SteveBaker 20:31, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
The article: Left-handed claims visual thinkers are statistically more likely to be left handed - and also backs up the link with dyslexia and mild autism. SteveBaker 20:36, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Visual and linguistic
This article seems to infer that one is either a visual thinker or a linguistic thinker. Could it be argued that certain individuals would be able to use both forms of thinking, albeit for different purposes. For instance, when one initially reasons out an idea in order to reach a conclusion, they do so linguistically, but when recalling their thought patterns, they would be perfectly capable of quickly resurfacing the idea to as well as how they came to there conclusion without requiring the time needed to undergo the every step of there reasoning process every time they recollect said idea? Further, could it also be argued that verbal thinkers do in fact use visual thinking to a lesser extent, even if it is secondary to their verbal line of thought? 66.24.236.62 01:14, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
- Yes, this is the issue I was addressing in my paragraph above. This article 'dissects' a normal mechanism from a healthy system and associates it with mental disability. I also suspect that psychology is (at least nowadays) so primitive that only one mechanism is assumed to present in one individual. --Vuo 11:24, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
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- I think we need to see references for this. Are we looking at people with 100% visual thinking versus people with 100% linguistic skills - are we presuming that there are people with 50% of the visual thinking skills and 50% of the linguistic skills or are we imagining a 'superhuman' person with 100% of both sets of skills? I have no clue. I'm definitely a visual thinker - people at work know that I'm incapable of conveying a coherent thought without a white-board to scribble on. I certainly have linguistic skills (I'm able to use them right here and now) - but are they as good as 'verbal thinkers'...? I suspect not - but it's hard to tell. Without some kind of solid reference on this subject, I don't think we should be engaging in Original Research (WP:NOR). SteveBaker 18:04, 14 November 2006 (UTC)